WEDNESDAY – If you went looking for the graves of all the dead Ramones, dug them up, extracted their souls, washed those souls and dried them and carefully folded them for shipping to Canada, where they were infused into the living bodies of four women from Montreal, the band those women would then form would almost certainly sound a lot like Pale Lips. They play quick, furiously catchy punk songs — all hooks and distortion and tattoos and denim, with just a hint of the Beach Boys-y seaside vibe that the Ramones brought all the way across the continent from California to the dark and dingy clubs of New York City. And Pale Lips didn't exactly hide their influences during their Wednesday night show at the Silver Dollar, turning the Ramones' "Rock & Roll High School" into "Rock & Roll Dipshit"and referencing old timey jukebox rock & roll with shout outs to songs like "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Great Balls of Fire." There's plenty of the '50s and '60s and '70s in the Pale Lips — but it made for one of the best sets we saw at CMW in 2016.

WEDNESDAY – Few bands in Canada are more reliably awesome on stage than Bend Sinister are. And they proved it once again this Canadian Music Week. Their first set of the festival was a fairly low profile slot: late at night on a Wednesday, while most of the city slept. But in the basement of the old Hotel Waverley, bathed in the sickly blue light of the Comfort Zone, the Vancouver prog-rockers tore through a blistering series of songs — the kind of tunes that it's hard to believe were written in the 21st century, and not in the hey day of classic rock. Sweat-drenched headbands and raging keyboard solos; vicious leg kicks and vibrating tambourines. Given the timeslot, the audience was sparse — only about a couple dozen strong — but I'm not sure I've ever heard such a small crowd give such a big roar in response to a band. And Bend Sinister deserved it. Just as you'd expect.

The Balconies play the Great Hall at 11pm tonight (Thursday, May 5) for Canadian Music Week. We originally published this post about the beginning of our love for them back on January 28, 2014.

It must have been four or five Canadian Music Weeks ago when my own love affair with The Balconies began. After several recommendations from friends, colleagues, the band's management and common sense, I stood at The Horseshoe as skeptical as only a music editor can be. It was the festival's Saturday night, so I was running on fumes, but I'd promised too many people I'd see this show to let them down. When the house music stopped, the crowd hushed and The Balconies walked on stage. I saw three young, attractive people grab their instruments, lean in and begin to play what would soon become some of my favourite songs.

Jacquie Neville took centre stage wide-eyed, as she still does today, like a young Pat Benatar. She greeted the audience with a wail — one as strong as the women of Heart or even Joan Jett — and The Balconies had me. Each song, with the help of bassist Stephen Neville and drummer Liam
Jaeger, was better than the last; they murdered their 25-minute set. Immediately kicking myself for waiting so long to see them, I stood in awe. Sitting at home later, writing my review, I thought about how I was going to explain all of this to the readers. What I came up with then was the truth:

"To say this band is a beast on stage is a dramatic understatement. Their music reached out and bitch slapped The Horseshoe across their drunk faces and demanded attention."

I'm proud to say that I don't think The Little Red Umbrella team has missed a Balconies show in Toronto ever since.

In 2009, the band released their self-titled debut and toured the shit out of it. The crowds grew. People took notice. The band honed their live show to perfection. Being classically trained musicians, they've been able to play venues as diverse as rooftops, the basement of a movie theatre and Trinity Bellwoods Park — all while sounding like a well-oiled machine.

Fast forward to today, the day The Balconies release Fast Motions on Coalition Music. Having seen a few preview shows for the tracks on the record, I can say that even before I listened to the album, any skepticism over the result was non-existent. Playing the record is like seeing their show. It's powerful, deep and unforgettable — everything The Balconies should be. Stand out track "Boys and Girls" will knock you on your ass, as will live favourites "Kill Count", "Do It In the Dark" (formerly "Serious Bedtime") and "Fast Motions" (formerly "French Kiss"). They all build up to explosive finales, doing everything the band does best.

Is it the record of 2014? Maybe; it is still January — but I won't rule it out. And Saturday's show at Lee's Place could very well be the show of 2014.

So why not join us? Like all Balconies shows, we wouldn't miss it for the world.

Cody McGraw is a lot of things, but the thing we would call him his face is the Managing Editor of The Little Red Umbrella. A semi-retired music journalist, he will write about bands that are important to him in between articles he writes for us making fun of things. If you want to see what we put up with then follow him on twitter @Cody_McGraw.

Pins & Needles play the Silver Dollar at 8pm tonight (Wednesday, May 4) for Canadian Music Week. We originally published this interview with them April 23, 2014.

There might not be any band in Toronto with a better age-to-awesome ratio than Pins & Needles. They got together at Girls Rock Camp back in 2012 and they already count some of the city's best acts among their supporters — groups like The BB Guns and Patti Cake. "We're a mix between '50s doowop and garage rock," they explain when we asked them to describe their music. "Just picture loads of three-part harmonies, beachy riffs, some punk influences, some soul sprinkled in there, and some tinkling of '80s synth. Not sure if that gives a clear picture, but that means the more reason to check it out!"
A new, crowd-funded, debut EP will be coming within the next few months, but you won't have to wait that long to hear Pins & Needles for yourself. They'll be playing at May Cafe this Saturday night (April 26, 2014) as part of a fundraiser for Princess Margaret Hospital. All the details are on Facebook.

In the meantime, you can get to know them a little better with some live videos and a round of Five Questions right down here:

1. If you could open for one current band that you haven't played with before, who would it be?

R: I want to say The White Stripes, but since I can't I'm going to go with Jack White. That or The Dirty Projectors!

D: I would say The Strokes, or Best Coast.

N: Alive, would be Half Moon Run, because they seem so awesome and they play sick music. Dead, the Beatles before they were super super big. Because damn, who wouldn't want to hang with the Beatles?

S: Everyone has such good answers! Jack White would be unreal, the Strokes absolutely insane and the Beatles (?!) would be mind blowing. Anyone got connections?

2. If you could play one venue you've never played before, what would it be?

D: I would love to play The Opera House, because I've seen some great bands there and it's a gorgeous venue.

S: I think I want to play a big festival. It seems like such a cool experience and you would get to meet and see so many bands! In Toronto though I think I'd have to go with Sound Academy or the Phoenix, they're really good venues!

N: The one venue I desperately wanted to play was Lee's Palace, and we've sort of already done that... So.... Yeah... But the next step up for me would also be the Phoenix, definitely.

R: Stonehenge, the original rock concert.

3. If you absolutely had to get a face tattoo of album art from one record, which record would you want to have on your face for the rest of your life?

D: I would say either Elephant by The White Stripes or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles.

S: I feel like my taste in music changes every month and I don't have any albums that are classics to me! But for right now I guess I'll have to say Grimes because I just got her album on iTunes and the art is really cool.

N: Its a tie between the Velvet Underground's Banana Album, or Eagles's Hotel California. Just because both would make sick tattoos.

R: I want to stick The Cat Empire’s logo in the middle of my forehead!

4. What was the first record you ever bought? When was the last time you listened to it?

N: In all honesty the first record I ever owned was an original Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas Album. In the summer I would run around my grandmother's house in my bathing suit and scream "christmas time is here" at the top of my lungs. It was a dark time. I haven't listened to it since I was seven or eight.

R: My first was Arular by M.I.A. I just rekindled my love for it, so I'd say I listened to it less than 24 hours ago. However, when I was younger my mum asked me to pick out any album I wanted at the record store, and I picked out Delta 5’s Singles and Sessions mix. Haven’t listened to it since I was little… Maybe I should go do that now!

S: I think the first CD I ever got was Raven Simone, but the Cheetah Girls came shortly after and I think it had more impact. I'm a really cool person as you can see.

D: The first record I bought was Joan Jett and The Blackhearts I Love Rock And Roll, and I played it on my uncle's record player in Montreal.

5. If you could switch places with another musician in some type of "Freaky Friday" type incident, who would you want it to be?
D: Present day, it would be Leslie Feist for sure, because I think she's gorgeous and one of the most talented women out there.

We're been a bit slow to come out of our winter hibernation this year, which means we've been unforgivably slow to listen to the new song from Toronto's wonderful weirdos in Weaves. But holy shit. "One More", which premiered on NPR back at the beginning of March, is one of the best tunes the band has released to date. Which is saying something — the bar has been set high by the distorted squeaks and squeals of songs like "Motorcycle." Pretty much every track Weaves has released has been one of our favourite tracks in recent years.

So if you haven't checked it out yourself yet, it's about time you listen to "One More":

I can remember
precisely when it hit me. I was staring out the window of my big, empty
office, watching an even bigger home go up across the street. We were
living in one of those up-and-coming neighbourhoods, selected not for
its charm, but for its potential increase in value. The fact that houses
were being torn down and replaced was a selling feature, my fiancée
said.

In
principle, I agreed, but the atmosphere of destruction depressed me. All
winter, while I struggled to set down words that would mean something
to someone, somewhere, I’d looked over at what had been on that lot. It
was a small, pink house that sat awkwardly on the street, a sloped-roof
affair in a land of bungalows and stone McMansions. Its upper windows
were left open to the elements, frozen curtains flapping in the wind, as
if in capitulation, though the spray-painted markers and safety tape
had already gone up by that time: nothing and no one could save it.

On the outside, my life at 35 looked great — a promising career, a doting partner, an elegant home, things, vacations, a big engagement ring, money in the bank.

There was just one problem: I wasn’t happy. I
was good at my work but I didn’t believe in some of the fundamental
aspects of what I was doing. I was invested in the idea of a partner I
could share my life with, and yet I felt deeply alone.

The lies crept in softly. First it was a kind of sublimation, in the shaky ‘trying my best’ of my 20s — well, that isn’t exactly what
I wanted, but that’s probably close enough — and into my 30s it became a
momentum of “alrightness,” of being okay. A sort of, ‘hey, this is like
what other people I know are doing,’ without a real consideration of
whether it was right for me, or what a happier life would even look
like.

And
here’s the secret: I got good at it. You get really, really good. And
then you wake up one morning and you pad into your office, and something
in your line of sight has changed, and you have no idea who the hell
you are or how you got there.

That’s
reductive, of course — in reality there were myriad tiny realizations.
But the sum was this: if you aren’t honest with yourself — cuttingly,
painfully honest — life can’t be honest with you. I could not attract
the deep understanding, the tenderness in a partner that I wanted and
still want more than anything. I could not use my talents and insights
to help the people and causes I care about, to effect the change I want
to see. Not unless I was honest about who I am and what I want.

Walking
away wasn’t the hardest part, though it felt like it at the time. He
followed me around the house as I threw my life into boxes.

You can’t leave me, he kept saying. Oh, but I could.

For
the first time in my adult life, I was going to do what was right for
me, without a complex inner negotiation, without a decimation of self. I
did not want to marry this man — no part of me did — and if I couldn’t
find someone that every fibre of my being did want, someone I could
deeply love and respect, I would rather live the rest of my life alone,
with my ideas and my sense of self intact.

What
I didn’t realize at the time is that facing into our decisions is where
the real work and the fear and the self-doubt begins. It’s everything
after the dramatic exit, the door slam, the (justified and unjustified)
self righteousness, the rolling down the street in a truck with nowhere
to really go, realizing you’ve wasted time and there’s no way to get it
back. That the reason you don’t have the things you wanted — a loving
husband, a family, a career that actually makes a dent in the world and
will leave something after you’re gone — is you, your own shortcomings and your fear. And maybe you’ve missed the boat, entirely.

What
I’ve described here is the decision not to “settle”; my experience is
in no way special. But what’s worrying, and worth pointing out, is that
settling was like air; except for brief punches of grief and despair
that seemed to come out of nowhere, it didn’t feel like anything at all.
I had lied to myself so well — in so many areas of my life — it seemed
natural, normal to just keep pressing forward until the memory of what I’d wanted was like a distant dream, faint and ridiculous.

But our dreams aren’t ridiculous. In fact, they aren’t really “dreams” at all. They are who we are —
the most fundamental expression of ourselves as individuals, before the
negotiations and the bullshit and the doubt pile up on us.

The
specifics of why I veered so far from myself aren’t important, except
for this: I believe it’s part of a pattern, one we can’t fully see until
the end of our lives. Of course, if we look, it’s almost certain we’ll
find what we seek: We’ll see our triumphs and our failures in the
context of the hands we were dealt. Regardless, I’m certain of this: If
you are honest with yourself, no experience — good or bad — is ever
truly wasted.

After
walking away from a life I didn’t want, I let go. I fell deeply and
honestly in love for the first time in my life. It was short and brutal
and he broke my heart — he actually crushed me completely, for months I
felt like I couldn’t breathe — but I saw the curve of what an honest
love could be like. It’s the most beautiful and breathtaking thing, to
place yourself gently in the hands of another human that you respect and
like, and ask for what you want: to be loved back, cherished,
understood.

I
see now that this is all part of my pattern, and so are the good things,
too. I moved to a place I like. I deepened my friendships and made new
ones. I embarked on a new career path, working with people who inspire
me. I found the courage to start sharing my fiction — the deepest held parts of me that I’ve been pushing down all my life.

It
occurs to me that starting over was letting go, and letting go is a bit
like prayer: Involuntary and also deliberate. You will get what you ask
for, what your energy moves undeniably toward, the most desperately
whispered desires of your heart. It’s only that the answer might look
like nothing you imagined.

Melissa Hughes is a Toronto-based writer whose freelance work has
appeared in The Globe and Mail, Ottawa Citizen, and on CBC radio. She
has worked as a reporter for the London Free Press and the Barrie
Examiner. You can read all of her posts here and follow her on Twitter @meliss_hughes.

The Diodes may very well be the most important punk band in the history
of Toronto. They were formed in 1976 — playing together at the Ontario
College of Art just as the Queen West punk scene was about to become one
of the greatest punk scenes on Earth. And The Diodes played a founding
role.

It was The Diodes and The Viletones who quickly became the giants of the
scene: their infamous rivalry pitted the art school background of The
Diodes against the working class thuggery of The Viletones. But it was
still a tightly-knit community. In 1977, The Diodes turned their
rehearsal space in the basement of a small office building (on Duncan
just south of Queen) into a punk club called the Crash 'N' Burn. That
summer, they invited all the best punk bands in the city to come play —
The Viletones included. For a few, brief, glorious months, bands like
The Curse, The Dishes and Teenage Head shook the building to its
foundations. But it didn't last: The Liberal Party of Ontario had an
office upstairs; by the end of the summer, their complaints about the
noise and rowdiness forced the club to shut down.

By then, word had gotten around. That August, The Diodes became the very
first Toronto punk band to sign a deal with a major label. The year
after that, they started playing a brand new song. "Tired Of Waking Up
Tired" would prove to be one of the most popular tracks to ever come out
of the Queen West punk scene. Chart even put it at #17 on their list of the Top 50 Canadian Singles Of All Time.

Special thanks to Ralph Alfonso (The Diodes "manager, designer, lighting guy, roadie, publicist" and co-founder of the Crash 'N' Burn) for his help with this post.You can listen to more songs from the Toronto Historical Jukebox here.

The very first legendary home run ever hit in Toronto was hit in 1887.
More than a century before Joe Carter's famous World Series walk-off at
the SkyDome, Cannonball Crane hit a homer into the sky above the Don Valley to end a game at Sunlight Park.
It was made all the more impressive by the fact that it came during
extra innings in the second game of a double-header — and that Crane had
pitched all 20 innings for the Toronto Baseball Club on that Saturday
afternoon. Those two victories sparked a 16-game winning streak that
brought Toronto our very first baseball championship.

Cannonball Crane fell apart soon after, spending his final days as a
broke, unemployed, depressive alcoholic who met his end by drinking a
bottle of a chloral at a seedy motel across the lake in Rochester. But
thanks to that home run, he'd already written his name into the history
of our city. He was a hero. For decades to come, his name would be
mentioned with reverent awe on a regular basis in Toronto. And it still
is from time to time. In fact, next summer Heritage Toronto will unveil a
new plaque on the spot where Sunlight Park once stood — at Queen &
Broadview — and it will include a mention and a photo of Crane. Nearly
130 years after his game-winning home run, the name of Cannonball Crane
is still remembered.

Those opportunities for quasi-immortality don't come along very often.
Extraordinary talent has to conspire with a strange amount of luck in
front of an unusually large audience. Cannonball Crane was one of the
greatest pitchers and sluggers of his time, brought to the plate at just
the right moment in front of a record-setting crowd — about 10% of the
entire population of Toronto was at Sunlight Park that day.

In Game Five against the Rangers, one of the greatest sluggers of our time came to the plate at the SkyDome during one of the strangest innings in baseball history — and more than 10% of the entire population of Canada was watching.

Ned "Cannonball" Crane

No one ever expected José Bautista to become a superstar. He was drafted
in the 20th round. He spent years as a forgettable utility infielder.
In his rookie season, he got released and traded four times in just a
few months — from one terrible team to another. Finally, Pittsburgh
traded him to Toronto for a middling minor league catcher.

The Blue Jays didn't expect him to become a superstar either. But after making an adjustment to his swing
— adding a higher leg kick to change his timing — that's exactly what
he did become. In 2010, he hit 54 home runs — a dozen more than anybody
else hit that year. And he hasn't looked back. Since Bautista became a
slugger, no other slugger has hit more home runs than he has. On
Thursday, Joe Posnanski of NBC Sports called Bautista's career "one of the most bizarre and inspiring stories in the history of baseball."

They say that thanks to his early struggles — along with facing the
subtle and not-so-subtle racism of the old school baseball establishment
— the Dominican Bautista has always played as if he has something to
prove. And that, in part, is what makes him such a perfect fit for
Toronto.

Torontonians, too, feel like we have something to prove. We always have.
It's our infamous colonial mentality, stretching all the way back to
our early days as a muddy outpost on a distant, snowy frontier. Our city
was founded as a capital — but a tiny capital, thousands of kilometers
away from the heart of the British Empire, dwarfed by the American
juggernaut to the south. We've always been secretly ambitious (our
founder, John Graves Simcoe, wanted Toronto to become a city so awesome
that Americans would beg to be let back into the British fold), but we
worry that if we're honest with ourselves we'll find that we're largely
irrelevant. That inferiority complex was already in place long before
Cannonball Crane stepped to the plate on that September afternoon in
1887. It was, I suspect, part of what drove the crowd's frenzied
reaction when he crushed his game-winning home run.

As the fans lifted Crane onto their shoulders and paraded him out of
Sunlight Park and onto Queen Street, the team's owner scrawled a
triumphant message on the scoreboard: "CITIZENS, ARE YOU CONTENT?
TORONTO LEADS THE LEAGUE."

The crowd went nuts. In Toronto, we're always looking for signs that we
really do deserve our place as one of the most important cities on the
continent — even if those signs come from something as random and
trivial as the outcome of a baseball game. On that day, it must have
felt like our city was finally coming into its own: a booming metropolis
in a brand new nation... and now a famous baseball star to call our own
and a fresh championship pennant to hang in our brand new stadium.

It felt like that again in the early 1990s, as Joe Carter wrote his own
name into our city's history with his own game-winning home run. We were
still a booming metropolis, even bigger now, playing on a bigger stage,
proud of our country and our place in the world — of peacekeeping and
of Heritage Minutes and of top spot on U.N. lists — with yet another
fresh pennant hanging in yet another brand new baseball stadium. Those
Blue Jays seemed like us, the way many in Toronto were beginning to see
themselves back then: cosmopolitan, multicultural, professional,
elite...

Joe Carter's walk-off

But since then, of course, our sports teams haven't exactly helped with
the whole inferiority complex thing. At this point, no North American
city with as many major sports franchises as we have in Toronto has gone
this long without at least appearing in a championship final. And while
sports are supposed to be a silly distraction that ultimately doesn't
mean much, it does do something to a city — there is a civic toll that comes with being a city full of Leafs fans. Especially
here, where sometimes it still feels like we live on a forgotten, snowy
frontier, where blowing a 4-1 lead late in a hockey game seems to
confirm our worst fears about ourselves and our place in the world. Even
if that's really quite silly.

In Toronto, we're used to getting our hopes up only to have them
immediately dashed in spectacular, heartbreaking fashion. We're used to
feeling embarrassed by our sports teams, and that feeling spills over
into other areas, too: we're embarrassed by our sports teams, by the new
name of the SkyDome, by our transit system, by our racist Prime
Minster, by our crack-smoking mayor...

For most of this last week, it felt like it was all happening again. As
far as talent is concerned, the Blue Jays are a juggernaut — some say
they're one of the greatest baseball teams ever assembled. But in a
short playoff series bad luck can bring down even the greatest of
baseball teams. And Toronto is used to bad luck.

When the Jays lost the first two games at home, there was a familiar
sinking feeling. And as they clawed their way back into the series over
the next two games, hitting thrilling home runs in the distant heat of
Texas, we were reluctant to get our hopes up again, a city full of
Charlie Browns sick of trying to kick that football.

For most of Wednesday night, in the sudden death of Game Five, it seemed
like we were right to be suspicious. For the first six-and-a-half
innings, disaster loomed: the Jays quickly went down by two runs, fought
their way back to tie the game with a mammoth home run from another
lovable Dominican slugger — Edwin Encarnación, walker of the parrot, bringer of hat tricks
— and then, almost immediately, there was that bizarre fluke throw by
Canadian catcher Russell Martin, the ball clanking off Shin-Soo Choo's
bat and sputtering down the line as the go-ahead run dashed home from
third base. This was how we were going to end our season? This confusing mess of a run?

The aftermath of the Martin-Choo play

The pathetic, childish, dangerous rain of beer cans that followed wasn't
just about that specific moment in the game, it was about 20 years
without a Blue Jays playoff appearance, about half a century without a
Stanley Cup, about Vince Carter and Chris Bosh and Andrea Bargnani. It
was disgust not just with the umpires or the rules, but with all of
sports in general, with the whole concept of random chance, with the
very nature of the universe itself...

But luck is a funny thing.

Baseball — like life — is at its best when it feels like magic. It's a
long, unfathomably complicated thing, a baseball season. It's impossible
for a mind to wrap itself around all the pieces and interactions
involved: the hundreds of players, the thousands of games, the hundreds
of thousands of individual plays that can be broken down into millions
of distinct elements. It can be an awe-inspiring experience, watching it
all unfold. The almost quantum-like fluctuations of individual pitches
gradually build themselves into larger structures over the course of the
summer, into the baseball equivalent of planets and stars: games,
seasons and careers. At times, luck and human agency come together in a
sequence of events that seems to defy the laws of reason and logic and
chance — producing moments that seem nearly miraculous. Cannonball Crane
hits a walk-off home run on a day he pitches 20 innings. Joe Carter
becomes the only player in the history of the sport to hit a
come-from-behind home run to win the World Series. We are reminded that
amazing, wonderful, stupid, lucky things can happen. Even to us.

No one has ever seen anything like that seventh inning. Posnanski called
it, "The craziest, silliest, weirdest,
wildest, angriest, dumbest and funniest inning in the history of
baseball... There has never been an inning like it." That thought has
been echoed over and over again in the hours since it happened — not
just by people in Toronto, but by baseball fans everywhere. On her CBS Sports Radio show,
Amy Lawrence promised, "We will never forget what happened in that
seventh inning." It was, without a doubt, one of the most memorable 53
minutes in the entire history of a sport that has kept records since
before the American Civil War... since before
Canadian Confederation... since before Toronto's first skyscraper was so
much as a glint in an architect's eye... Talent and good luck conspired
on an international stage in a way that no one has ever seen before.
And it happened in Toronto. To Toronto.

Russell Martin tries to throw the ball back to the pitcher and it hits
Choo's bat. The Rangers make three straight errors. José Bautista comes
to the plate...

No current Blue Jay has been a Blue Jay as long as José Bautista has. No
Blue Jay has waited longer for the team to make the playoffs. For
years, Jays fans have worried that bad luck and the lack of talent
around him would conspire to waste his years here. That he might be
doomed to share the fate of Carlos Delgado and Roy Halladay: superstars
who never played a playoff game with a blue bird on their chest, who
will always be remembered fondly in Toronto, beloved, but never had a
chance to write their name into the history of our city in one instant,
with the indelible ink of a miracle in the postseason or during the
final days of a pennant race. They never had the chance to do something
extraordinary with our whole city watching, our whole country, our whole
continent... the kind of moment that turns you into more than just a
baseball player, that makes you, in some very small way, immortal.

Historica bait

You could see it all in that bat flip. The years of struggle. The years
spent playing for Toronto teams that were never quite as good as he was.
The years of being ignored in favour of the Red Sox and the Yankees.
The years without a playoff berth. Gone. In an instant. In one blazing
miracle of a home run.

Gone for Bautista and gone for Toronto, too. We're happy to have that
bat flip speak for all of us — which is part of why I think we fell so
deeply and instantaneously in love with it. It's the swagger Toronto is
learning to have. The swagger we want to have. The Toronto of
Drake and of #The6ix. Of a giant TORONTO sign in Nathan Phillips Square.
Of one of the world's great music scenes. Of Nuit Blanche and First
Thursdays and Friday nights at the ROM. Of a city that is slowly
realizing — despite all the real and serious problems we still have to
solve — that we really are pretty great, y'know.

We're a city coming to the realization that more than 200 years after Simcoe founded our muddy town, we actually have
lived up to our original promise. And if we still doubt it, Bautista's
home run gives us another chance to get the external validation we want
so badly. For this moment at least, we can forget about them flying our
flag upside-down and about whatever that moron Harold Reynolds thinks.
Toronto, the scribes of NBC Sports remind us as they marvel at that miraculous inning, is "one of the world’s great cities."

Even if the season ends next week, even if the Jays don't win another
game, people in Toronto — people all over Canada — will remember
Donaldson and Tulo and Price and Sanchez and Papa Buehrle and Pillar's
crazy catches and the beaming smile of Ben Revere...

But most of all we'll remember José Bautista. And that bat flip. And the
night it felt like Toronto really could live up to our spot on the big
stage. Just like we did in 1993. And in '92. And in 1887.

Rob Ford was there, by the way, somewhere at the Dome as Bautista's
home run soared into the seats. But we weren't embarrassed — we were too
busy celebrating, we didn't even care.

You can ready my full, illustrated history of baseball in Toronto here. I've also written more about the tragic tale of Cannonball Crane here, the 1887 Toronto Baseball Club here, plus the greatest second baseman in Toronto (who isn't who you think it is) here, Babe Ruth's first home run here, and Joe Carter's World Series-winning dream here.

You're probably too drunk on green beer or Guinness to even read this right now, so why don't you come back tomorrow when you're sober- no wait, better give yourself a day off tomorrow and come back the next day, you know, when you're feeling more like yourself again...

Hey, you're back! Did you have fun? Good. Now, where was I? Oh yeah, St. Patrick! What was his deal? He was Irish, that much I know. Wasn't he the guy who led all the children out of town with his flute? Oh, no, that was some other guy... okay, I have no idea then. Maybe it was snakes? To Wikipedia, I go!

Let's see now, so it turns out that Saint Patrick wasn't Irish! I know, right? It's not known exactly where he was born, but it was definitely either Scotland, Britain or Wales. He was actually captured by Irish marauders when he was 16 and sold into slavery, the poor little guy. He was sold to some Druid dude named Milchu, and little Paddy (oh yeah, his name wasn't actually Patrick, it was Maewyn Succat, but for our purposes, we'll refer to him as Pat) was his slave for 6 years, until finally being told by an angel to run away, he escaped (on literally, a wing and a prayer) and headed on a boat back to Britain.

Now, during his time with the Druids, Pat got really into God. He prayed a lot. I mean, it's not like he had much else to do while he was out in the fields all day tending his master's flock (let's just hope all he did all day was pray...). He also learned the language and traditions of the people of Ireland, and decided it was about time those barbarians got some God in them. So, when he got home he went immediately into the priesthood, and then started gunning for a posting in Ireland, so that he could return to convert the pagans. He eventually did get sent back, and the first thing on his list of people to see and things to do was to find Milchu and give him a piece of his mind. Apparently, though, he didn't want revenge, he just wanted to save the guy's soul. Milchu got wind that his slave boy had returned and was looking for him, so he just went ahead and killed himself. Seriously. Seems a bit extreme, doesn't it? He was either really scared that Pat actually wanted revenge (and so, I imagine this Milchu character must have been a pretty cruel guy) or, he just really didn't want to have to listen to any of Pat's proselytizing (and I mean really, who could blame him?).

So, after that little setback, Patrick continued his mission to convert the Irish to Christianity. For someone who ended up becoming their patron saint, he sure wasn't treated too well while he was there, often getting beaten, robbed, and probably nearly executed! Not to mention that nasty little detail about the kidnapping and slavery... which is probably why Patrick believed that owning another human being was, you know, like, wrong? And that actually caused a bit of tension between him and the church, which took another 1000 years to get around to condemning slavery. Anyways, judging by Ireland today, Patrick was pretty successful. It is pretty ironic (maybe more like in an Alanis Morisette kinda way, though) how he's celebrated around the world today, though. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have been totally cool with the drunken belligerence and public urination that one usually encounters on March 17th. My worst experience with St. Paddy's Day was taking a vomit-smeared bus home at 2am. Literally, the floors, seats, and poles were covered in vomit. Where was my luck o' the Irish then, huh?

Oh yeah, the thing about single-handedly banishing snakes from Ireland? Probably never happened. Seems there weren't any snakes up there in the first place. So, maybe the snakes are a symbol for the Druids? Or maybe he just made it up. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to banish all the giraffes from Ecuador (sainthood, here I come...)

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Photo: St. Patrick

Rebekah Hakkenberg is a curator/writer/photographer living in Toronto. She is also the co-creator of Once Again, To Zelda, which is where an earlier incarnation of this post originally appeared.

This catchy tune from Richie Knight & The Mid-Knights was the very first #1 single in Canadian history. The band had been around since the late 1950s (originally formed with a different name and a different line-up), but as "Charlena" hit the airwaves during the spring of 1963, the group was launched into a whole new level of stardom. Now, they were one of the most famous bands in Canada. They were in high demand at high schools dances, got invited to play dance halls all over Southern Ontario, and even landed a couple of gigs at Maple Leafs Gardens — one of them opening for The Rolling Stones. Not only that, the fact that "Charlena" had climbed all the way up to the top of the CHUM Chart proved that Canadian bands could get air play too; the song marked the beginning of a whole new era for Canadian music.

And they didn't stop there. Richie Knight & The Mid-Knights were far from one hit wonders. After the success of "Charlena", they released a whole slew of excellent songs — from the rowdy rocker "That's Alright" to the slow burning ballad "You Hurt Me" to the bluesy chain-gang tune "Work Song."